The Hansom Wheels met at the Palmetto / Summit Club on October 19 with 21 people in attendance. Spokesman Cap’n Billy Rawl announced that the game was afoot, we toasted the woman, and some stranger named Marcia Rowen led us in the Musgrave Ritual.

      Bob Robinson revealed the answers to his Happy Hour Posers: (1) Convoluted Coda = ―The Final Problem‖; (2) Nuns’ Pet Goldfishes = ―The Priory School‖; (3) Kin of Downcast Goldfish = The Blue Carp Uncle = ―The Blue Carbuncle‖; (4) Mr. Queen at Easter Time = detective Ellery Queen dyeing Easter eggs = ―The Dying Detective; (5) Just One Really Had the Name = ―The Three Garridebs‖ (the assigned story for the evening); (6) Stigma Attached to Running Second = ―The Second Stain. The solution to the crypto-gram of a quotation from ―The Three Garridebs‖ was ―Mr. John Garrideb, Counsellor of [actually, it was ―at] Law, was a short, powerful man with the round, fresh, clean-shaven face characteristic of so many American men of affairs.

      Quizmistress Marcia Rowen—oh, that’s who she was; we hadn’t seen her in so long that I forgot—provided a one-question quiz on ―The Three Garridebs: ―Killer Evans made use of a clever scheme to further his evil ends. Very similar ruses were adopted by several other inhabitants of the Canon in hopes of carrying out their own criminal acts. Name those individuals and the adventures in which they appeared.‖ The ―scheme involved luring someone away from his or her residence or place of business on some phony pretext so that the criminal could commit a nefarious deed in that location. Answers were John Clay in ―The Red-Headed League, the Beddington Brothers in ―The Stockbroker’s Clerk, Isadora Klein in ―The Three Gables, Baron Gruner in ―The Illustrious Client, and Sherlock Holmes in ―The Retired Colourman, who

sends a telegram summoning Josiah Amberley to Upper Purlington so that he can burglarize Amberley’s house!

      Under “Scionic Matters of Grave Importance, several members brought guests with them. As is our custom, we gave the visitors a Hansom Wheels Welcome by embracing them and kissing them on both cheeks—and, in the case of the more attractive ones, on the lips as well.

      The Featured Presentation was Diane Bodie, who was raised by Indians and drifted across the West fighting for justice. No, wait, that was Cheyenne Bodie, played by Clint Walker on the 1955–1962 TV show. Diane Bodie is a retired South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) senior agent and forensics expert whose nickname among the other agents was ―Dead Body Bodie, because whenever she was called out on a case, there was a dead body involved. (They could have called her ―Corpse Bodie, but that wouldn’t have had the rhythm or the alliteration.) She gave a PowerPoint presentation about one of her cases, in which a woman tried to fake her own death to avoid an arrest warrant by digging up a skeleton from a graveyard, putting it in her car with its foot on the gas pedal, setting the car on fire, and fleeing. It was supposed to look like she had had a wreck and the car had burst into flames, like they do on TV, and burned her up; but the fire went out quickly, leaving the bones untouched, so it was obvious to the trained eyes of the investigators that something was fishy. The woman was tracked down, and added to the original charge from which she was attempting to flee were additional counts of grave-robbing, desecration of human remains, arson, improper parking, and being a moron.

      Al McNeely read Vincent Starrett’s Sacred Sonnet, ―221-B, and we all went out and faked our own deaths by setting our cars on fire.